Google (GOOG) is bringing its fast-growing Chrome browser to the newest Android mobile devices, preparing for a future where even more people connect to the Web through a phone or a tablet.

The launch of Chrome for Android Beta on Tuesday caps an engineering effort of more than one year within Google and marks a convergence between two of the company's fastest-growing products. Both Android and Chrome launched in the third quarter of 2008, and both have had powerful growth spurts, with Android becoming the world's most popular mobile operating system last year, and Chrome on a track that could make it the world's most popular browser later this year.

"This is a big moment for us," said Sundar Pichai, Google's senior vice president for Chrome and Apps. "The world is going mobile at a pretty phenomenal rate. Using the Web on a mobile device, I think, is in its early stages, and we think this a big step toward where we're headed."

Google also needs to respond to its rivals, particularly Microsoft, which is working on its Windows 8 operating system, including a new version of its Internet Explorer browser, that will work with both touch-screen devices and traditional desktop computers.

"There is sort of a convergence coming in the next 12 to 18 months -- mobile and desktop are fusing together, in large part because Microsoft decided the PC's future is mobile," said Al Hilwa, an analyst with research firm IDC. For Google, "this is an update to a browser that hasn't received a lot of updates for the last couple of years."

Advertisement

Initially, the mobile version of Chrome will be available to a minority of Android users -- the owners of newer devices with more powerful chips that also run the latest 4.0 version of Android, which Google dubbed "Ice Cream Sandwich." Those devices include Samsung's Galaxy, Nexus smartphone and Motorola's Xoom tablet. Future Ice Cream Sandwich devices will all be able to run Chrome.

Google hopes the convergence of Chrome and Android will drive more smartphone users to try its browser and will also attract independent software developers to focus more on apps that run on Google's products. And while native apps remain the centerpiece of smartphones and tablets, Google believes that is changing as browsers become ever more powerful under HTML5, the latest browser standard.

"All our data shows increasing usage of the Web on phones and tablets," Pichai said. "So our goal was to build a mobile browser from the ground up that provides the same fast, simple experience people have come to expect from surfing the Web on their desktop and really push the boundaries of what is possible on the mobile Web."

Chrome in November overtook Mozilla's Firefox to become the world's No. 2 browser on desktop computers behind Internet Explorer, according to StatCounter, and currently has more than 26 percent of the worldwide browser market. Its market share is growing, while Microsoft's browser has about 40 percent and is slipping.

Part of mobile Chrome's appeal is that can unify a user's Google account on the desktop with their mobile devices, so the browser's bookmarks, tabs -- and, soon, passwords -- will be synced between a PC and any other device on which users are logged in. The mobile version of Chrome echoes the desktop version's emphasis on speed, as well as on tabs that allow users to open multiple Web pages at the same time.

With those functions, Google was playing catch-up to Mozilla, whose Firefox mobile browser already allows syncing of bookmarks and tabs between desktop and phones or tablets.

Touch-screen functions are another major feature that Google engineers had to import to the mobile version of Chrome.

The mobile Chrome allows users to lay separate Web pages open in different tabs on top of each other like a virtual venetian blind, and to swipe one tab off the screen to close it. There is also a zoom feature that allows users to blow up a small section of the screen, making it easier to find links that are tiny on a phone.

Writing the code to add those functions and to better capitalize on mobile hardware better was a big job, one that took Google well over a year to complete.

"This is not 'Chrome Lite,' " Arnaud Weber, engineering manager for Chrome, said of the new mobile browser. "This is the full Chrome."